Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [180]
In the morning, Bartholomew and a scribe went ashore. As soon as he set foot on the boat landing, Indians took him by both arms and sat him down on the tall, whispering grass by the water’s edge, in full view of the ships. He asked them a few questions, his amanuensis ready to record their replies, but “the Indians were so terrified by the sight of the pen and paper that most of them ran away. The reason was that they were afraid of being bewitched by words or signs.”
And yet, said Ferdinand, “it was they who impressed us as being great sorcerers, but on approaching the Christians they scattered a certain powder in the air; they also burned this powder in censers and with these censers caused the smoke to go toward the Christians,” not unlike the incense with which they were familiar. The Indians’ reluctance to accept gifts struck Ferdinand as “evidence that they suspected us of being enchanters, confirming the adage that says a rogue sees himself in every other man.” There was a spark of mutual recognition between the Indians and the Christians, who recognized the sophistication and intelligence—as well as the strangeness—of the other.
It was Sunday, October 2, the ships still anchored in the vicinity of Puerto Limón, when Columbus sent his indefatigable brother ashore once again, this time to “learn of the Indians’ dwellings, customs, and mode of life.”
Bartholomew and his party came across an amazing crypt, a “wooden palace” covered with cane, containing several tombs. One held a single corpse, “dried and embalmed”; another held two corpses, “with no bad odor, wrapped in cotton cloth: over each tomb was a tablet carved with figures of beasts, and on some the effigy of the dead man, adorned with many beads . . . and other things they most prize.” This memento mori illustrated both the brevity of their temporal lives and the longevity of their spiritual horizons.
Columbus being Columbus, he honored the Indians’ intelligence by capturing several “so that we might learn the secrets of the country,” in Ferdinand’s words. Out of seven seized, two were selected to act as guides. “The others he sent home with gifts in order not to throw the country into an uproar.” Relying as usual on an interpreter, he explained that he needed their assistance to navigate the coast, promising to set them free at journey’s end. The Indians misunderstood, and concluded, not unreasonably, that Columbus was holding them for ransom. The folly persisted into the next day, when a delegation of Indians presented the Europeans with “two native wild boars”—in all likelihood ugly, bristling peccaries, or New World pigs—“small but very savage,” in exchange for their kinsmen. Although he refused to yield, he paid them for the “boars” and sent them home politely clutching the same useless gifts they had refused in the past.
The peccaries briefly distracted Columbus, who had become fascinated by the only slightly less bizarre spider monkey, the “size of a small greyhound, but with a longer tail, so strong that if one coils it about something, it holds it as tightly as if it were fastened with a rope,” in Ferdinand’s deft description. “These animals move about in the trees like squirrels, leaping from tree to tree and grasping the branches not only with their hands but also with their tails, by which they often hang for rest or for sport.” Not knowing what to make of the agile, long-limbed spider monkeys, which are indigenous to the New World, Ferdinand called them “cats.” Their playfulness led to cruel sport, which Ferdinand never forgot.
A crossbowman brought one out of the forest that he had knocked down from a tree with a shaft, and because it was still so fierce that he dared not get near it, he cut off one of its legs with a knife. The sight of it scared a valiant dog we had on board but frightened even more one of those boars the Indians had brought, and it backed off in great fear; this surprised us because hitherto it had run at everybody on deck, including the dog. The Admiral then had boar and cat thrown together, whereupon